Blue-ribbon mentor

Saturday

Apr 28, 2012 at 12:01 AMApr 29, 2012 at 11:44 AM

By late Saturday afternoon, more than 1,200 students will have packed up their experiments, folded their poster boards, gathered their ribbons and trophies if they won them and headed back to all points across Ohio.

Spencer Hunt, The Columbus Dispatch

By late Saturday afternoon, more than 1,200 students will have packed up their experiments, folded their poster boards, gathered their ribbons and trophies if they won them and headed back to all points across Ohio.

Another year, another Ohio State Science Day.

But this one will be different. This one will be remembered by many as the last overseen by Lynn Elfner.

“It is no exaggeration to say that without State Science Day and the selfless commitment of Lynn Elfner and many other scientists around Ohio who give of their time .?.?. I would not be where I am today,” Stacey Lowery Bretz, a chemistry professor at Miami University, wrote in an email.

Lowery Bretz went to Perkins High School in Sandusky, Ohio, and participated in several State Science Days in the mid-1980s.Elfner has overseen 37 of the events in which the best of the best young science students show off the research projects that school and district judges deemed worthy.

Elfner is CEO of the Ohio Academy of Science, a statewide organization that supports and promotes scientific inquiry and science education.

His is a key voice, as it has been since 1975, in debates over how science should be funded and taught.

“When I came to Kent State 27 years ago, it was Lynn Elfner. It’s been Lynn Elfner the whole time,” said Tom Schmidlin, a Kent State University meteorology professor and president of the academy’s board of trustees.

“It’s kind of scary to think of him not being there.”Congratulations, Mr. Schmidlin. You have to replace Elfner when he retires on Dec. 31.For his part, Elfner said he’s ready to relinquish a role he’s cherished.“I want to leave on a high note,” he said.

He expects that note could be struck this Saturday at the State Science Day, at Ohio State University.

There, students’ projects will be judged and they will compete for $2.2 million in awards and scholarships.

“I prod it along and make sure it maintains high standards,” he said.

As a farm kid in DeGraff, Ohio, Elfner developed an interest in natural sciences during 4-H outings.

“ What those early 4-H experiences gave me was exposure to professional (scientists),” he said. “ We’d go out to stream on a spring day with wildlife officials and they showed us everything that was living in it.“

It’s a situation where I could have fished that stream my whole life and never knew what was there.”

In 1960, during his sophomore year in high school, Elfner entered his collection of fossils in his school’s science fair. He made it to the district level but was not invited to State Science Day.“

It was a great collection, but no research,” Elfner said. “I've learned a lot since then.”

As an undergraduate at Ohio State, he studied zoology. In 1971, he earned his master’s degree in botany.

After that, he briefly led the Ohio Environmental Council, an advocacy group, before going to work in 1973 as an analyst for Ohio Gov. John Gilligan’s Office of Budget and Management.He said a disagreement over a partisan issue led to his leaving. “I never regretted it.”

His background in science and in budget management made him a good fit to lead the academy, said Ron Stuckey, an OSU professor emeritus of botany and Elfner’s master’s adviser.

“He was very independent and able to work on his own,” Stuckey said. “I think that’s what made him a good person for the job.”

Elfner also is known for sharing frank opinions, something that has served him in debates with state officials over academic science standards.

In 2002, he worked to defeat organized efforts to allow “intelligent design” to be taught in public classrooms.

“That was a really big fight at the highest levels of our nation,” Elfner said. “Science was under attack.”

Elfner argued that intelligent design is merely a guise for creationism.

After years of debate before the State Board of Education, the concept was dropped.

That wasn’t the only battle Elfner has waged with the State Board of Education. In 2010, he criticized the state’s update of science standards, scheduled to take effect in 2013.

Elfner said the standards won’t ensure that students perform hands-on experiments, especially in the areas of technological design and engineering.

“That’s where science is going,” he said.

Michael Collins, a State Board of Education member and leader of the science standards committee, said many of Elfner’s recommendations were included in the new standards.

“We didn’t always see eye to eye. We certainly took his suggestions,” Collins said.

“I think in the long run, his input on the guidelines will have a beneficial impact on Ohio students.”

Diane Gabriel, a retired high-school teacher from Carroll, points to State Science Day as the best example of hands-on science, something she and Elfner support.

“These kids take an idea and they find out that things don’t happen the way they are supposed to happen and you have to learn to get over, around or through it,” she said. “Then you have to get it all in written-form research.

”Getting students to the competition is half the battle. Elfner works hard to find judges, secure sponsors and build up scholarship money.

He said the idea for awards and scholarships came from Lois Cook, an assistant dean at Wright State University, roughly 20 years ago. The pitch was that universities that routinely award scholarships to top athletes should also offer scholarships and financial support to the state’s top student scientists.

Now more than 60 colleges, state agencies, professional associations and corporations provide the prizes.

Matt Mowrer, an electrical engineer at Battelle, has been a judge at the event since 1999.“He has sort of built a machine that runs very smoothly,” he said.

Elfner, however, said he won’t mind if his replacement fine-tunes that machine. He said his predecessor, Jack Melvin, said: “?‘When I leave, I’m not coming back, and you won’t run it the same way I did,’?” Elfner said. “I feel the same way.”

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